'Assassinated': Shock After Two NYPD Officers Gunned

'Assassinated': Shock After Two NYPD Officers Gunned Down in Their Car
NBC News
BY PHIL HELSEL AND JONATHAN DIENST
December 21, 2014

Investigators believe the gunman who ambushed and fatally shot two New York City Police Department officers Saturday boasted on social media that "I'm putting wings on pigs today" before the killings. The Instagram post also references Michael Brown and Eric Garner, two unarmed black men who died in confrontations with police.

Police said Ismaaiyl Brinsley, 28, walked up to a police car in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn at 2:47 p.m. and shot officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos through the passenger side window, fatally striking both in the head. Brinsley then ran to a nearby subway station where he turned the gun on himself, police said.

"Today two of New York's finest were shot and killed, with no warning, no provocation. They were, quite simply, assassinated," Police Commissioner William Bratton said. "Targeted for their uniform and for the responsibility they embraced to keep the people of this city safe."
Police said Brinsley — who has an extensive rap sheet, with more than 15 arrests in the past 10 years — is suspected of shooting and wounding an ex-girlfriend in a Baltimore suburb earlier Saturday before he traveled to New York and ambushed the officers. While Baltimore County Police sent a fax warning that Brinsley was a suspect in that shooting and might be in New York, that message came in just as Brinsley was carrying out the attack, according to Bratton.
read more here